About

We Will Rebuild refers to a series of images of minor objects which have fallen over or been knocked slightly out of place, sarcastically captioned with the slogan “we will rebuild” in reference to a typically insignificant natural disaster. It is similar to, and is often used interchangeably with the sarcastic use of never forget.

Origin

The earliest known instance of the meme in its current form was posted to FunnyJunk[1] on August 23rd, 2011, the same day the 2011 Virginia earthquake occurred. The image macro featured a picture of a plastic table and chair set with one chair tipped over, thus mocking the lackluster destructive power of the earthquake.

Spread

Also on August 23rd, 2011, Redditor uncouthsilence5 submitted a post titled “Never Forget” to the /r/pics[4] subreddit, featuring an image macro of a bald eagle superimposed over the fallen lawn chair with the caption "8/23/2011 / Never Forget. Prior to being archived, the post received over 26,000 up votes and 990 comments.

Hurricane Irene

After Hurricane Irene hit the United States on August 28th, 2011, several image macros were created with the caption never forget, referencing the moto inspiried by 9/11 used in a mocking way to highlight the underwhelming damage caused by the tropical storm appeared.

Seddon Earthquake

On July 20th, 2013, Redditor benj39 submitted a post titled “We will rebuild.”[3] to the /r/funny subreddit. The image was taken from a New Zealand news channel story about the 2013 Seddon earthquake[4] which caused four injuries and no deaths.

The news channel’s comical decision to display fallen bottles as an example of the “damage” done by the earthquake was well received by the subreddit, and the post gained over 2,000 points prior to being archived.